Cabaret Voltaire seit 1916

"If your heart does not beat faster when you pass by the window of a cap-maker’s shop full of cut-off, happily smiling heads; if, while rushing to the bank or the parking lot, you do not stop before a nicely combed handsome man, forever good-looking and young, watching you from the label of a barber’s shop, then … then there is no point in your travelling to Rome, wasting your time at the Louvre, walking through the Hermitage.

If you do not notice the window of a glass cutter’s shop or, even more, turn your head away from it and spit, then, then it is a certain sign that you will never understand Rembrandt. I know, you will try, having improved your taste by roaming through dank museums, to remove the monstrous body of kitsch crawling all over the place – from your parents’ bedroom to congress halls and apartments of movie stars. Your efforts will be in vain, for the hideous kitsch is – a twin brother of high art. A Siamese twin.

Do not try to destroy kitsch because you will be left without your favourite tie, the one you are proud of, because you will lose fond mementoes from photo albums, you will be left without the opera, novels, a painting you adore, because you will be left without ideas for which you sacrifice yourself, because you will be left without your most precious lover in her ear-rings and slippers. And what would you need your life for then?"